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UMaine luring out-of-state students with match program

The Lowell Sun

Updated:
04/07/2017 06:35:37 AM EDT

By Katie Lannan

State House News Service

BOSTON -- As education officials and advocates push for more taxpayer funding to keep public higher education affordable to Massachusetts students, one out-of-state university is looking to Bay Staters to help solve its own financial and demographic challenges.

In the face of demographic shifts and stagnant tuition, the University of Maine in 2015 launched its Flagship Match scholarship program, offering qualifying out-of-state students the chance to attend the Orono campus for the price they'd pay to attend their own state's flagship public school.

"It's a good thing for the university, and it's also a good thing for our state," said Jeff Hecker, UMaine's provost and vice president for academic affairs. "The more we can bring young people to Maine, some of them are going to stay."

Hecker said the scholarship program -- which provides a level of aid that brings the school's out-of-state tuition price down to the cost students from Massachusetts and eight other states would pay to attend their own state university -- was intended to respond to two challenges.

Maine has the oldest median age in the nation and graduates fewer students from high school each year, he said. While the pool of potential applicants is shrinking, the school's board of trustees has not approved tuition increases for Maine students in several years -- this year would mark the sixth consecutive one, according to Hecker.

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The program began with a focus on Maine's five neighboring New England states and expanded to include California, Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Hecker said UMaine has been "assertive" about recruiting flagship match students, including placing billboards in Massachusetts advertising that students can attend UMaine for the same cost as they would pay at UMass Amherst.

UMaine's fall 2016 entering class had 430 students from Massachusetts, 327 of whom received flagship match scholarships, according to the school.

Applications from Massachusetts students increased 41 percent from 2015, when 2,357 applied, to 2017, when 3,328 applied, UMaine figures show.

In those two years, the school also experienced a 56 percent increase in applicants from Connecticut, a 26 percent increase in Rhode Island applicants, a 4 percent increase in New Hampshire applicants and a 4 percent decrease in Vermont applicants.

Tuition and mandatory fees at UMaine add up to $10,628 for resident students and $29,498 for those from out of state. At UMass Amherst, total tuition and fees are $15,345 for in-state students and $33,492 for out-of-state, figures likely to increase next year.

A Massachusetts student who meets the grade point average and test score requirements for the flagship match award would receive approximately $14,527 from UMaine to bring their cost in line with UMass resident tuition, according to UMaine. Award amounts are finalized after each school adjusts its tuition rates.

University of Massachusetts President Martin Meehan told state lawmakers in March that he'd like to "keep tuition increases to no more than inflation" next year but would need "adequate support" from the state.

In his budget request for fiscal 2018, Meehan had asked the administration for an increase of $30 million or 5.9 percent over this year's funding, for a total state appropriation of $538.6 million. Gov. Charlie Baker's $40.5 billion budget, which attempts to rein in costs in the budget-busting MassHealth program that is threatening to consume new state revenues, proposes a $3.5 million increase for UMass.

In his March 29 testimony before the House and Senate Ways and Means Committee, Meehan said UMass was making "historically high" investments in financial aid for its students, putting $257 million in tuition and fee revenue into student aid last year and estimating an investment of $270 million this year.

He said enrollment across the five-campus system has also reached an all-time high of 74,000 students, with Massachusetts residents making up more than 81 percent of the undergraduate population.

At UMaine, the goal is to have a higher mix of out-of-state students. Hecker said the school had about 15 percent out-of-state students seven years ago, and the freshman class that enrolled last fall is about 40 percent out-of-state.

"That's about our goal," he said. "We'd love to be right around there."

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